TV/Movies Megathread

[Berkut]

Valmy and Cancel culture always existing - that's not what is meant when people moan about cancel culture.
What is usually meant there is the idea there's some all powerful leftist force silencing all discenting viewpoints.
It goes far further than saying Islam is dumb and losing your Muslim fanbase.

I don't think Cleese said anything remotely objectionable in that article.

Sure. On it its own.
But in the context of him whinging about cancel culture and people being silenced for having the wrong view....

Yes, it is very obvious what sort of format this show will take.

It's refreshing to see how ready people are to discuss the topic without immediate assumptions about the validity of the arguments before they even see the show.

Interestingly on another board I saw some others jumping to reply in a similar vein that it was funny how triggered some were being and getting angry about a show before it has even aired....
When none of the replies, there or here, have done that.

So you have answered one strawman with a reference to another strawman?

Is it strawmen all the way down?

[Savonarola]

Spiderman The Emo Years 3 (2007)

P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins books always begin in a world recognizable as the then present United Kingdom and travel to a fantastic land.  She had the gift of not making it clear when you had left London and had arrived somewhere else; but you knew when you were there  I was reminded of that when watching Emo Peter Parker dance about a jazz club; clearly we had left the Spider-Verse (at least the one established in the first two films), but how we got there wasn't so obvious.  It doesn't just jump from Spiderman and The Green Goblin battling high above Manhattan to Tobey McGuire's dance routine; there's some sort of build up.  (Well, "Build up" might not be quite the right term; there are things that happen between those two events, including a montage of Peter Parker repeatedly walking down the street scoping out/being scoped out by babes sort of like a cross between "Citizen Kane" and the opening scene of "Saturday Night Fever.")

This suffers from problems common in third movies of a trilogy; too much baggage from the first two films, and too many new characters.  The action scenes are fantastic; the dance routines, not so much.

[Josquius]

I've been watching The Watch.
Onto episode 3.
It was supposed to be terrible. But I'm finding it decent?

[Admiral Yi]

Watching Narcos Mexico.

I didn't know the Sinaloans invented sensemilla.

[Syt]

I long for the day when our animation style evolves.

https://twitter.com/MisterABK/status/1431280666751156225
"Every episode of Generic Animated Sitcom™"
(video at link)

P.S.:

https://twitter.com/FrizFrizzle/status/1420509456429891588

Friz Frizzle
@FrizFrizzle

Here's the cast of my new adult animation "People With a Non-Human That Talks", featuring a completely original art style! Proud to announce I've already been picked up for 26 episodes.

[Savonarola]

Louder than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story (2012)

This is a documentary about Detroit's Grande Ballroom.  The Grande Ballroom was build in the 20s as a dance hall (one favored by the Purple Gang) with one of the largest wooden floors in the country.  This documentary covers the period between 1967-1972 when the Grande Ballroom was Detroit's premier rock club.  The title is based around a number of puns; the club opened in 1967, the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco; the club consciously imitated the Filmore in San Francisco; and the local acts that played at the Grande (the Stooges, the MC5, Alice Cooper, The Amboy Dukes) were much louder than the acts that came out of Haight-Ashbury.

The documentary focused mostly on the louder bands; not only from Detroit, but also the British bands from the era (The Who first performed "Tommy" live at the Grande); but everyone played there.  BB King was interviewed in the documentary, Big Brother recorded a couple songs off of "Cheap Thrills" there (and some of the members of the MC5 recall that they kept shouting "Kick out the jams" at Janis.)  The MC5 were one of the house bands ("Kick out the Jams" was recorded live at the Grande) as were the Stooges.  The proprietor, Russ Gibb, said that he didn't get The Stooges at all, the first time he met them Iggy Pop had miked the toilet and was just fascinated by the rush of noise he got when he flushed it; but the kids loved them.

The music industry changed in the early 70s towards larger venues and, even before the riots, the Grande was in a rough neighborhood.  So today, like much of Detroit, the building is abandoned and falling apart.

The Grande is a few miles from where my mom grew up.  I had an uncle who used to go there regularly; he said that the music was fantastic, but you were just as likely as not to find someone ODing in the bathroom when you walked in.  The documentary did mention the drug use, but only the fun psychedelic drugs, not the hard ones.

Nova South University has an exhibition of Anna Sui's fashion design at their university museum.  I learned that Sui grew up in Metro Detroit and collected posters to the shows of the Grande (she would have been too young to go to a concert there.)  She credited that as one of the influence on her design.

I met a couple women of a certain age at the exhibit who grew up in the Detroit area. They had been to the shows there and assured me that the Grande was a wicked place.

[Savonarola]

The Golem: How He Came Into the World (1920)

This is Paul Wegner's third film about the Golem; he had previously directed "The Golem" (1915) and "The Golem and the Dancing Girl" 1917.  In this film he plays the Golem.  Obviously the man liked his golems.

While not the nightmare of "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" this is still a weird expressionist tale filled with oversized and stylized sets. 

[crazy canuck]

The Italian Job (1969)  This one did not age well.  Caine's character is an ass who harasses a bunch of dim witted English blokes with non stop verbal abuse while they pull off a heist.  It is never made very clear why he was there.  He did not seem to do anything other than yell abusively at the people doing the real work.  Part of the heist team was Benny Hill's character.  His role in the heist was even more of a mystery as all he did was sexually assault a woman on a bus and then as she entered the police station.

The car scenes were still pretty good but don't make up for the rest of the movie filled with terrible dialogue, and very cringe scenes.   

[The Brain]

Cringe? OK incel.

[Sheilbh]

I think that's kind of a theme in Michael Caine's big early roles (off the top of my head, except for Zulu) that he's normally remembered as charming and likeable. But I think that's a testament to his charisma because the characters he plays are almost never nice people - Alfie, Italian Job, Get Carter, maybe even the Deighton films.

He's almost always playing an anti-hero, but his performances are so charismatic we remember them as heroes until you actually watch the film again

(It's why I also think the Jude Law remakes of Alfie and Get Carter don't work)

[crazy canuck]

I think that's kind of a theme in Michael Caine's big early roles (off the top of my head, except for Zulu) that he's normally remembered as charming and likeable. But I think that's a testament to his charisma because the characters he plays are almost never nice people - Alfie, Italian Job, Get Carter, maybe even the Deighton films.

He's almost always playing an anti-hero, but his performances are so charismatic we remember them as heroes until you actually watch the film again

(It's why I also think the Jude Law remakes of Alfie and Get Carter don't work)

I think you nailed it.

[mongers]

I think that's kind of a theme in Michael Caine's big early roles (off the top of my head, except for Zulu) that he's normally remembered as charming and likeable. But I think that's a testament to his charisma because the characters he plays are almost never nice people - Alfie, Italian Job, Get Carter, maybe even the Deighton films.

He's almost always playing an anti-hero, but his performances are so charismatic we remember them as heroes until you actually watch the film again

(It's why I also think the Jude Law remakes of Alfie and Get Carter don't work)

I'm not sure they're all anti-heroes, sometimes its more, the common man in establishment settings.

[celedhring]

After all the praise from fellow Languishites I've watched Giri/Haji. It is a very fine show.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not sure they're all anti-heroes, sometimes its more, the common man in establishment settings.

I think that might go for the Deighton films (but again - horrible to women from memory). But again I think that's part of the magic of Caine's charisma. His characters in Alfie or Get Carter are awful people, but we give them a sort of cheeky chappie, common man pass - I think that's all in his performance and in anyone else's hands we'd sort of recoil from them.

[viper37]

Fast and Furious 9.

The first 3/4 of the movie is a tad less... crazy than 6-7-8.  Once they get into the conclusion, it's going bonkers, as with any Justin Lin movies.  Even with your brain at 'off' it gets a little too crazy.

The best of the franchise are still 1-4-5.  After that, it goes in every direction.